Saturday, December 24, 2016

As much of the rest of us were gearing up for a relatively quiet holiday season, Apple and Nokia were getting ready to go to battle, reigniting a war that had seemingly gone cold in 2011 with a reported $720 million settlement for the use of a number of patents.

Earlier this week, Apple filed suit in California, alleging that Nokia removed certain patents from the deal for the purpose of “extorting excessive royalties.” It later added in a statement to TechCrunch that one-time smartphone leader was “using the tactics of a patent troll.”

For its part, Nokia filed suit in three German cities and ground zero for patent battles here in the States, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas over 32 patents applying to a wide range of smartphone hardware and software.

It’s probably too late to do any major sales damage ahead of the holiday, but in the wake of the myriad suits, Withings products have gone missing from Apple’s online store.

Attempting to purchase the company’s fitness devices like a smart scale or blood pressure monitor will pop up the cheeky error, “Looking for something? We thought so. However, the product you’re looking for is no longer available on apple.com.”

They appear to have gone missing from the company’s retail locations as well – the company’s brick and mortars don’t tend to stock anything you won’t find online. We’ve reached out to the company for comment, but the timing does seem curious, with Nokia having completed its acquisition of the French electronics company over the summer.